[Plura-list] Department of Truth; Support Amazon workers today

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Department of Truth: What if reality was a democracy?

* Support Amazon workers today: Events in 45 cities in support of the
Bessemer, Alabama union drive.

* This day in history: 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

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👓 Department of Truth

The first trade paperback collection of Image Comics' DEPARTMENT OF
TRUTH came out in February; I found it on the 100% always-reliable
recommended release table at Secret Headquarters in Los Angeles. I read
it in an hour and added it to my pull list immediately.

https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/the-department-of-truth

DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH is written by Batman's James Tynion IV, drawn by
Martin Simmonds and lettered by Aditya Bidikar. It's a dreamlike,
impressionistic book with shades of Dave McKean.

It tells the story of Cole Turner, an FBI agent who studies far-right
conspiracists, and who, after being brought into a inner circle that has
documentary and directly physical evidence of the flat earth and faked
moon-landings, is kidnapped by a black-ops government bureau.

The bureau is the Department of Truth, and its mission is to neutralize
beliefs in conspiracies because the true nature of reality is that it is
a democracy: whatever the majority believes, comes true.

Turner is the operative born to do this job, because he was implicated
in the Satanic Panic of the 1980s when he was in nursery school,
"recovering memories" of a murdering, baby-eating occult priest who
tormented him.

And even as Turner has grown up to understand that his "recovered
memories" were, in fact, a cruel hoax perpetrated by the adults in his
life, he's never stopped having nightmares about this literal demon he
imagined.

And with reality being a democracy and all, Turner now has to confront
the possibility that the hoax that has haunted him all his life might
*become real*, if enough others buy into it.

The mission of the Department seems right, even if it is shrouded in
secrecy and filled with a menagerie of cold-blooded killers of
surpassing eccentricity. But then again, if reality is a matter of
opinion, then what business does the Department have killing off people
who prefer a different reality?

In the first volume, Turner is drawn into the strange reality-warps of
Sandy Hook truthers, Qanon cultists, and birthers, and is set up for a
moral conundrum with real heft and salience about it.

You can get a sense of just how well-told and beautifully illustrated
this extremely timely graphic novel is by reading the first issue, which
Image has posted to the web:

https://imagecomics.com/read/the-department-of-truth

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👓 Support Amazon workers today

Amazon is an innovator: the company has invented some of the most
sophisticated techniques ever seen to avoid taxation, the minimum wage,
worker safety, and climate justice.

They pioneered worker misclassification, allowing them to treat their
drivers as independent contractors or even subcontractors to independent
contractors, even as they subjected those workers to supervision to
rival the most invasive workplaces.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex

They summoned into existence the "Mechanical Turks," among the
lowest-paid pieceworkers in existence, largely overseas, receiving
pennies (or fractional pennies) to backstop "AI" applications, proving
that AI really stands for "absent Indians".

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/17/reverse-centaur/#reverse-centaur

Amazon gets its workers coming and going: it's not just denying bathroom
breaks and other human necessities, nor merely wage-theft - it's also
tip-theft, stealing the alms we guilty customers toss to its workers to
assuage our shame.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/amazon-ftc-pay-flex-drivers-stolen-tips.html

But the most visible sign of Amazon labor exploitation is in its
warehouse workers, a vast army of "reverse centaurs" who serve as the
hands of remorseless, relentless robots. The more automated an Amazon
warehouse is, the more workers it maims.

https://www.ft.com/content/087fce16-3924-4348-8390-235b435c53b2?shareType=nongift

Amazon's incredible profitability during the lockdown was paid for with
workers' lives. Its warehouses were the nexus of multiple covid
outbreaks, and the company used racist smears to discredit workers who
demanded basic safety precautions.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/03/socially-useless-parasite/#christian-smalls

Amazon understands that warehouse organizing is the beginning of the end
for its extraction of inhuman work for inhuman wages.

That's why even its prized tech workers get fired for expressing
solidarity with warehouse workers.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/14/abolish-silicon-valley/#hang-together-hang-separately

And it's why the project of organizing Amazon warehouse workers is so
urgent. Amazon's plans for its warehouses are even more Dickensian than
the current system. Take the "megacycle," a ten-hour shift that runs
from 1:20AM to 11:50AM.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/05/la-bookseller-royalty/#megacycle

It's a shift that any worker would suffer under, but it's especially
hard on women workers, forcing them to leave behind their families, and
to commute to work at an hour when public transit isn't running.

The megacycle isn't just a way to realize "efficiencies" (more work for
less money), it's also a way to punish labor activists: it's being
piloted at DCH1, the Chicago warehouse whose workers made national news
by demanding safe work conditions during the lockdown.

But Amazon's workers refuse to be intimidated. Warehouse workers
continue to demand the right to organize and collectively bargain for a
living wage and safe, humane working conditions.

In Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon warehouse workers are voting on union
formation.

Amazon has pulled out every stop to sabotage the union vote. They even
got the city to change the timing of the traffic lights near its
warehouse so that organizers couldn't use red lights to talk to workers
on their way to the plant.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/17/22287191/amazon-alabama-warehouse-union-traffic-light-change-bessemer

Statistically, you are probably an Amazon customer. So am I. They are
nearly impossible to avoid. After all, not only has Amazon predated upon
small businesses, eliminating choice - and what they didn't kill,
private equity looters destroyed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-retail-debt/

My problem with Amazon isn't the ease of buying web hosting or compute
time; it's not the convenience of having a lot of goods for sale in one
place; it's not the utility of music streaming or the entertainment from
TV shows.

My problem with Amazon is its brutal labor policies, its tax evasion,
its climate wreckage, its monopolistic predation, its union busting, its
wage theft.

It's not like the company can't afford to end these crimes.

It made $20B in profits in 2020.

When we talk about a good Amazon, we're not talking about eliminating
Amazon (though maybe we should break the company up). We're talking
about shifting the disposition of that $20B, so it doesn't accrue solely
to its shareholders.

Much of that $20B is the result of exploiting workers, dodging taxes (or
even getting tax *subsidies*), stealing from suppliers, externalizing
the climate and other costs of its business onto the rest of the world.

We all have a stake in a fair Amazon - whether or not we're Amazon
customers. The workers in Bessemer have faced an onslaught of
propaganda, spying and intimidation from Amazon and its contractors, the
Pinkertons (yes, the *literal* Pinkertons).

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#awu

Many of us have recognized that the Bessemer workers deserve our
solidarity. The Tech Workers Coalition, for example, has been running
the #DoItWithRealPower campaign to counter Amazon's propaganda.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/19/deastroturfing/#real-power

Today, we have the chance to *directly* support the workers in Bessemer.
SupportAmazonWorkers.org has organized 40+ solidarity demonstrations in
cities in the USA and Canada, which you can attend.

https://supportamazonworkers.org/march20/

Amazon knows this fight matters and it doesn't just target @BAmazonUnion
for propaganda. You're on the receiving end of those messages, too. That
"news report" you watched about how cool an Amazon warehouse is? An ad
disguised as news.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/28/holographic-nano-layer-catalyser/#quackspeak

Amazon workers in Germany have already unionized. The company can
certainly pay living wages and continue to operate. It's not fighting
for its life - its fighting to maintain incredibly high levels of
profitability, no matter what the cost to workers and the world.

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👓 This day in history

#15yrsago A new discipline to describe the copyfight
https://web.archive.org/web/20060716082207/http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/002930.html

#10yrsago Epublishing Bingo card from John Scalzi
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/03/20/the-electronic-publishing-bingo-card/

#5yrsago Meet the Commercial Energy Working Group, a lobby group that
won’t say who it lobbies for
https://theintercept.com/2016/03/20/mysterious-powerful-lobbying-group-wont-even-say-who-its-lobbying-for/

#5yrsago Bruce Sterling’s SXSW 2016 closing remarks
https://soundcloud.com/officialsxsw/closing-remarks-bruce-sterling-sxsw-interactive-2016

#1yrago Ifixit's new database of med-tech repair guides
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/20/pluralistic-20-mar-2020/#youfixit

#1yrago Republican senators told us everything was fine as they secretly
panic-sold their stocks
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/20/pluralistic-20-mar-2020/#senate-selloff

#1yrago Judge overturns terrible copyright decision against Katy Perry
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/20/pluralistic-20-mar-2020/#fair-use

#1yrago Right to Repair during pandemics
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/20/pluralistic-20-mar-2020/#r2r

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👓 Colophon

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/)

Currently writing:

* My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. Friday's progress: 511 words (118232 total).

* A short story, "Jeffty is Five," for The Last Dangerous Visions.
Friday's progress: 388 words (9273 total).

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues." Yesterday's
progress: 1079 words (34191 total).

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Privacy Without Monopoly: Data Protection and
Interoperability (Part 3)
https://craphound.com/news/2021/02/28/privacy-without-monopoly-data-protection-and-interoperability-part-3/

Upcoming appearances:

*  Balancing Worldbuilding and Narrative (with Karen Osborne and Kali
Wallace), Mar 24,
https://ucsd.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YSvD5IjGS7Su2z-xhQN1ZA

* Launch for Brian David Johnson's Future You (Powell's Books), Mar 30,
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/5716148038801/WN_psgDGchIRfaUQOJyvLnvzw

* All the Teachable Things I Know About Writing, Apr 13,
https://www.changinghands.com/event/april2021/virtual-writing-workshop-cory-doctorow-all-teachable-things-i-know-about-writing

* Interop: Self-Determination vs Dystopia (FITC), Apr 19-21,
https://fitc.ca/presentation/interop/

Recent appearances:

* Conspiracy Theories (Utopian Horizons):
https://soundcloud.com/utopianhorizons/conspiracy-theory-w-cory-doctorow

* Canadian Speculative Fiction (Unknown Worlds):
https://unknownworlds.podbean.com/e/canadian/

* Who Uses the Users? (This Machine Kills)
https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod/48-who-uses-the-users-ft-cory-doctorow

* Technology, Self-Determination, and the Future of the Future (CERIAS)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yC_hBDS-RU

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59
(print edition:
https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907)
(signed copies:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially,
provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are
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"*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion
Guy" DeVilla

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